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/r/technology is a place to share and discuss the latest developments, happenings and curiosities in the world of technology; a broad spectrum of conversation as to the innovations, aspirations, applications and machinations that define our age and shape our future.

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exactly what i was thinking. All these new "invention" videos from kickstarter and what not feel like they're trying to convince me of something and oversell their product. They should takes notes from these guys

It not really most schools including MIT, harvard, Gerogia Tech, stanford, or most university policy to let student maintain IP for free because it makes a large part of the endowment. Companies founded at top school are worth billions, and are used to re invest. In fact all these schools also have VC firms for students also to take another slice of the students IP.

and this explains precisely why funding NASA is good for industry - scientists start off solving some unrelated (and possibly crazy) problem, and discover practical solutions for everyone else along the way.

This was funded by the United States Defense Department. I'm 100% for increasing scientific spending, but you could easily use this example as an argument for continuing the high level of funding for our Defense Department. I think we should roughly double the NIH and NSF. More research goes through those organizations than through NASA.

Truly, when you have such an incredible surplus of funding, you're going to meet your bare minimum needs quickly and then be able to start branching out into weird and unexpected territory (see: monopoly Bell Labs). The difference is, as always, whether you want the ultimate goal of the sum of your efforts to be going to outer space or blowing our neighbors up. In the 60s and 70s, going to outer space WAS blowing our enemies up (metaphorically), but now we have to choose.

For example, cool-ass normal suits would be nice, but since our chances of getting cool humanoid military hardware that would facilitate their creation are pretty much zero, I say we focus on orbital elevators. Who knows, maybe we'll get both. But I imagine funding NASA over DARPA will mean a slightly lower chance that something gets nuked in the interim.

Space elevators are probably never going to happen. Geosynchronous orbit is 35,000 km. Say you wanted a 35,000 km steel cable that was 1 cm in diameter. The steel cable would end up weighing 88 million kilograms (97 thousand tons). It would take 1700 Delta IV launches to take such a cable just to LEO, god knows how many rockets it would take to get it to geosynchronous orbit. Ultimately, making a space elevator would require manufacturing the thing in space. Some people think we could use asteroids, but I think that mining, refining, and manufacturing steel or any other material in space would be an incredibly difficult endeavor. It would almost certainly require a manned mission.

The bigger issue is actually that the cable isn't strong enough to hold up its own weight. Not just steel, even carbon fiber is too heavy for its tensile strength. We haven't even found a material yet that could be used for these kinds of cable, no matter the cost.

It's 1am, but tomorrow if I have time during my coffee break I'm going to do the math and figure out what tensile strength to density ratio it would need, then compare it against an Ashby map. I'm kind of curious. I've day dreamed about space elevators since I read the Mars series some 12 years ago.

The only thing I'm anticipating from MIT is its report on their role in Aaron Swartz's death.

EDIT: Are you guys idiots? Hal Abelson (a professor at MIT) was appointed to lead an investigation into MIT's role in Swaartz's prosecution. It's been a month or so and still nothing has been revealed.

First, this is entirely irrelevant to this submission. Second, if I were investigator, I'd sure expect a lot more than a month to gather, analyze, and report my findings. Especially if I have other primary job responsibilities that demand attention.